The most common use for electrical conduit connectors is to facilitate the connection of conduit to a junction box. The junction box can be a variety of electrical enclosures such as an outlet box, transformer enclosure, circuit panel, lighting fixture—the list is nearly endless. There are many types of electrical conduit connectors. One type is used to make “snap-in,” 90 degree connections to junction boxes. The snap-in connectors do not have a locknut. Thus, during final installation, the snap-in connectors allow the electrician to quickly complete installation. The snap-in connectors are snapped into a knockout by compressing a set of attachment prongs and forcing the prongs through the knockout. In turn, the prongs capture a junction box interior surface and hold the connector and conduit to a junction box exterior surface.
In many electrical installation projects it is common for an electrician to complete as much preassembly in an environment that is relatively comfortable, safe, and where most non-portable equipment and tools are located, prior to completing the final assembly. Sometimes the preassembly is completed in a workshop at the same facility as the final assembly, other times the preassembly is completed offsite by a contractor. The preassembly may include prewiring or assembly of many individual components. Once any preassembly is complete, the preassembled components are transported to the final installation location.
The preassemblies are generally referred to as “whips” or “fixture whips” and may be a combination of connectors, electrical wires, conduit, and other related components. At least one problem arises when the snap-in connector is used. Many times during transportation of the whips, the snap-in connectors separate from the conduit. At a minimum then, the electrician has to spend additional time to reattach the connector. In a worst case situation, the connector is lost, the connector having fallen off of the conduit during transport, and is not recovered. In this situation, the electrician would then have to find and install replacement connectors prior to the final installation. In either case, at a minimum, the time and cost savings realized by preassembling the whip is lost during transportation to the final installation location.
Another problem with existing snap-in connectors, referred to above, is that the connectors are difficult to install. In an effort to speed up the installation process, the electrician may use a tool to compress the connector to get the attachment prongs to fit into the knockout. Occasionally, however, the tool will slip from the connector potentially resulting in a painful hand injury.
Another limitation with the existing connectors is that they do not accept a variety of conduit diameters. Therefore, the electrician must keep a large inventory of connectors available for installation onto different conduit sizes. Those skilled in the art will attest that creating and maintaining a large inventory of different sized connectors is time consuming and costly.
By way of example, current art and widely used angle connectors are multi-component; i.e., having screws, body, cap, locknuts, or other components. They are relatively expensive to manufacture due to their many components which must be separately manufactured and then assembled, often negating any benefit of their being able to accommodate different diameter conduit. Using these multi-component connectors is labor intensive as there are multiple steps in inserting and securing the conduit. Contractors and others are oftentimes in difficult working environments such as on ladders, scaffolding, in cold weather, etc. Locknuts are dropped, cross threaded, and so on, making these assembly operations highly troublesome.
There remains an unfulfilled need to provide an electrical conduit connector which can be installed quickly and easily with or without tools, captures, or clips on, the conduit in a manner that prevents unintentional withdrawal of the conduit from the connector, and does not, therefore, fall off during normal handling such as during transport, and that cooperates with larger ranges of conduit sizes.